Remember how I described thrift store shopping as a treasure hunt in this post? Well, I found gold today! I have been trying to build my collection of plant-strong early reads–books for preschool nutritarian/vegan kiddos, and Eureka! This book is actually two books in one, and both are fantastic! The first is Vegetable Soup: The Nutritional ABCs, and it goes through the alphabet using vegetables and helps kids make connections between what they eat and how it affects their bodies with rhyming verses like:

A is for all the ASPARAGUS,

Alive with vitamin A.

For healthy hair, skin and eyes,

This vegetable leads the way.

The illustrations are bright and fun and kept my 3-yr old intrigued.

Then you flip the book over and the other side is The Fruit Bowl: A Contest Among Fruit, a book that describes all different types of fruits competing to see who is “best.” Verses like this one are sure to charm parents and kids alike:

The next contestant’s a PLUM,

So good on a hot afternoon.

When left out in the sun.

It soon shrivels into a PRUNE.

I am so impressed with this book for multiple reasons. First, the readership could range all the way from toddler to primary age. The verses give information about the fruit or vegetable’s health benefit and/or its growth pattern. In The Fruit Bowl, the corners of each illustration either represent the four seasons for all fruit bearing tress or the growth patterns for plants and vines. The Vegetable Soup illustration have multiple objects other than the featured vegetable that start with the appropriate letter on each page. The illustrations are great for interaction; you can ask your kids questions to help them with counting, colors, shapes, etc.

In a society that inundates them with messages about poor food choices, it was a delight to find this gem of a book from Oasis Publications.

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Faster than a speeding couch potato! Able to leap the produce aisle in a single bound! Welcome to Super Veggie Mom, which chronicles my efforts to raise a plant-strong, creative, and bright family while pursuing my own writing and fitness interests.